


both a beginning and an end

by forgettingitsthere



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 01:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3792061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgettingitsthere/pseuds/forgettingitsthere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>adam wants. gansey gives. no one takes.</p>
<p>a not-love story in twenty parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	both a beginning and an end

**Author's Note:**

> this has been in the works since before i finished bllb. it took probably two months but i am so pleased with the end result.
> 
> title comes from 'brothers on a hotel bed' by death cab for cutie, because that's the adansey anthem tbh.

i.

adam wants. gansey gives. no one takes.

it’s a cycle. adam wants. gansey gives. no one takes. adam wants. gansey gives. no one takes. adam wants. gansey gives. no one takes. adam wants. gansey gives. no one takes.

rinse. repeat.

 

ii.

adam spends a lot of time thinking about how he met gansey. (of course he does. how could he not?).

more so, he spends time thinking about _before_ he met gansey. not far back, never far back, but the week leading up to that fateful day runs through adam’s mind more than he’d care to admit.

up until gansey all his days at aglionby were the same. listen to too expensive shoes clack down shiny hallways, take notes, study notes at lunch, and pointedly never make small talk (later, gansey will tell him he’s not good at networking and, like a bad habit, adam will look back at these days).

after gansey his life is a new routine. talk about glendower, think about glendower, _find_ glendower, get a favour. get a favour, get a favour, get a favour.

(it worries him that he now splits his life into pre and post-gansey) (it doesn’t surprise him)

 

iii.

adam and gansey fell into a routine quicker than either expected. adam adapted to most of gansey’s quirks, and faked the ones he couldn’t. his faith, like the rest of him, had never been unwavering and gansey was no exception – though, if anything came close it may as well have been gansey.

still they worked well together, and soon they got good at silent conversations and furtive looks. like they’re keeping an unknown secret from an unknown audience.

what they had was very different than anything ronan and gansey shared – those two like childhood best friends despite the fact they’d only known each other a little longer than they’d known adam.

and opposite of whatever ronan and adam share, which is to say a mutual allegiance to gansey.

the three of them find a balance, and noah squeezes his way in there, as noah does. and it _works_ , and it works _naturally_. which is so different for adam, adam who’s far to used to fixing everything three times over before it even sort of functions. he doesn’t let it happen as easily as gansey would like (and expects).

 

blue comes along eighteen months later and changes everything.

adam falls for her because she’s unusually stunning and gansey tells him to and she’s got a quick wit. he wouldn’t call it a conventional romance. he wouldn’t call blue a conventional girl. blue would call conventional boring anyway.

blue starts to builds herself some kind of niche in their group and adam’s happy – which may be less of a rarity over the last year and a bit, but it’s far from common. they flirt with the idea of flirting mostly, adam’s never done it, and it becomes abundantly clear blue hasn’t either (which adam finds baffling because who wouldn’t want to flirt with blue?).

 

iv.

and then he kills gansey. or he watches himself kill gansey in the future – or maybe an alternate timeline, he doesn’t understand the forest, but it doesn’t matter because gansey is dead and it’s his fault.

gansey is going to die. gansey is going to die and it’s going to be because of adam.

over and over he plays the scene in his head. gansey convulsing, covered in blood, looking up at adam – everyone else is looking at adam too, with a disdain far too familiar. it’s his fault. it’s his fault, it’s his fault, it’s his fault _._ of course it is his fault.

_are you happy now_? ronan snarls in the back of his mind over and over. each time with more blame dripping into his tone. and of course, _of course_ , he isn’t happy about it but the bite in ronan’s voice makes it seem like he has a reason to be. and it’s terrifying to think that even in the future he could seem happy about the idea of gansey dying, dying at his hands no less, because right now nothing is as petrifying as that thought.

 

v.

“fuck you gansey” rolls off his tongue likes it’s been brewing there for months, and it probably has. it’s probably been ready and willing since the first time gansey insisted ‘money was no object’. and after months of waiting it’s spit with a quiet ferocity adam didn’t know he had in him.

he has a million other things to care about – a million other people to be angry with – but all he can think about is gansey paying his hospital bill and finally, _finally_ , collecting adam with the rest of his things. he’d fit nice and neat in the box of other souvenirs from virginia.

for a moment he watched regret wash over gansey’s face, eyes closed and mouth turned down in a frown. to an untrained eye it looked more like gansey was lost in thought rather than lost in shame, but adam was used to the nuance of every gansey expression. then he got out, slamming the door as loud as he could so as to shake gansey out of his train of thought, and marched toward the highway being sure to resist all urges to turn around.

it’s an almost agonizing two minutes as he walks away from the car only to end up climbing back in, packing his stuff, and watching ronan carry it in to monmouth. it’s probably symbolic, he can pull from gansey’s grasp but the grip doesn’t loosen. ( _and whose fault is that?_ he’ll wonder later, he’ll wonder a lot).

adam never hated monmouth more than the night he forces himself to sleep in it. he tosses and turns replaying the fight with gansey in his head, he wonders, vaguely, if gansey would still be awake, if he should make some move to apologize. he wonders if gansey is wondering the same thing.

when he finally wills himself to sleep he’s immediately greeted with the image of gansey’s corpse and blood on his hands.

he wakes up knowing exactly what he has to do.

 

vi.

equals. that’s the idea ringing through his brain, he does this and finally he and gansey can be on the same level; finally the tension that’s been close to boiling over can come to a simmer. finally.

it’s a stupid idea, it is, hotwiring an ancient camaro and driving out to a magic forest. stupid. he has no real plan besides wake the ley line, but they’ve been studying how to do that for over a year so he hopes all the reading he did might actually pay off. he doesn’t focus on his lack of plan though, instead concentrating all his energy into ignoring the doubt ringing through his brain. he has to do this, he just has to.

when he ends up pointing a gun at his latin teacher he can’t help but be relieved he doesn’t like the feel of it in his hand. he doesn’t have time to dwell on it though because soon said latin teacher has a knife pointed at blue’s aunt, he’s throwing the gun into the brush, and gansey is there looking more gansey than ever.

everything happens in the blink of an eye and before he can consider it he’s offering cabeswater his eyes and hands. he catches the flash of agony in gansey’s eyes and the word equals plays through his head one more time. (“it was never about you.” and it’s true but he’s also never told a bigger lie).

 

vii.

cabeswater changes him, which, hypothetically, he knew would happen – or he certainly should have known would happen. there are other factors that could change him too, he knows: moving out of his parent’s, moving into monmouth, moving back out of monmouth, moving into st. agnes. it’s a lot to happen in the span of a few days. not to mention ronan starts creating things out of his dreams, or at least telling them about it, and blue still won’t kiss him. the latter of which is the closest thing he has to a normal problem.

gansey starts walking on egg shells around him, all the while pretending he is not walking on egg shells around him. it’s clear the others blame adam for waking the ley line, which is fair considering he did, in fact, wake the ley line, but gansey is so hell-bent on pretending it was a group decision and not adam’s twisted power play.

it isn’t a good look on him.

adam doesn’t have the luxury of ignoring his sacrifice. even with nothing happening there was something on the verge of happening. a brewing storm inside his head.

 

he blames cabeswater for turning his life further to shit as he watches his relationship with blue crumble to the ground. he blames gansey too, gansey and his stupid rent dropping. gansey and his stupid ever-present moves to collect adam.

he denies doing it. of course, he denies doing it, because he knew it would piss adam off. gansey had gotten more subtle over time in trying to help adam, financially and, occasionally, otherwise, he knew a blatant disregard for the importance of money wouldn’t get him anywhere; instead he insisted on giving adam things of his he didn’t need (or would replace when adam wasn’t looking) or, now, going behind his back.

he knew, or at least he should have known, it came from a place of kindness, but that same place meant that gansey didn’t respect his ideals, or at least couldn’t understand them.

_“i don’t want your damn pity.”_ he remembers (regrets) spitting at blue, he remembers kicking his make shift nightstand, he remembers feeling more like his dad than ever before.

something in his dna thrums fix me, fix me, fix me.

 

viii.

dc is a mistake. it had started off almost normal, cracking jokes in the back of helen’s car and talking about glendower. it’s their normal. and so long as they pointedly do not discuss cabeswater or money or any other area of discomfort they’ll be fine.

they aren’t fine.

as soon as the suits are on and they arrive at the gansey’s _mansion_ adam feels his throat get a little tighter (and he knows it isn’t his tie as gansey had insisted on fixing it in the helicopter. twice). he feels insistently out of place among the rich, because he _is_ out of place among the rich. as determined as he is to get the hell out of henrietta, he isn’t sure where he’ll go because there was nowhere else he belonged – assuming he ever belonged in henrietta in the first place.

he watches as his friend transforms from gansey to richard campbell gansey iii with every piece of small talk, every fake laugh, and every champagne flute readily accepted. he has seen this version of gansey a few times before but never in full swing like this. whether he likes it or not, gansey was made for this world in every way adam was not.

 

latin rings through the darkened room and adam feels electric. is this, he wonders, how gansey feels at these events? is this, he wonders, how gansey is supposed to feel at these events?

more so than ever before he can’t stand still as he makes his way through the crowd, sometimes letting gansey show him off (before he whisks away to play the good son) and sometimes bracing himself for introduction (“adam parrish, i’m one of gans – dick’s classmates at aglionby”) and answering questions fired his way with a false ease (yes. no. political science. maybe harvard. i am studying very hard, sir. well, i do agree with some policies, but not all. yes. no. no. yes. yes. yes.)

it serves as both a glimpse into his future and a glimpse into gansey’s past. he listens to gansey lament his childhood, “can you believe that i grew up in a place like this?” in a place adam only wishes he could have grown up in. only could have dreamed of growing up in.

it’s the same unintentional insensitivity adam can’t even bother to be angry with. or maybe he was already angry with it and had just gotten good at letting it bubble beneath his surface.

but it’s got to boil over sometime

“ _i won’t take your pity_.” and it feels awfully familiar as he spits it at gansey. and it feels awfully good to walk out of that hall.

 

ix.

he walks further than out of the hall. he walks fifteen miles from the gansey’s mansion and doesn’t remember a step of it. he only just remembers talking to gansey on the phone, chooses not to remember the concern in gansey’s voice, and is very glad he remembers his pointed decision not to say a word to gansey on the ride back.

he most definitely does not remember falling asleep in the gansey’s living room, but he must have, because he certainly wakes up there. it takes a moment to get used to his surroundings and gain any sense of footing, but soon he realizes where he is and reflexively pulls a face.

“morning,” gansey says, parked on the other end of the couch, he’s reading one of the many books littered across the room. they take up the two bookshelves as well as cover coffee tables and even a few rest on the floor (but in a way that seems well-read instead of cluttered).

“is it?” he asks, as it seems the only light in the room is coming from a small lamp.

“well, it’s three in the morning, so technically.”

a touch of guilt pangs in adam’s chest, “why aren’t you asleep?”

gansey shrugs, “i knew you’d wake up confused so i figured someone should be here, and i didn’t think helen would be that helpful. besides it’s not like i’d be sleeping anyway.” the last bit is a cheaply tacked on excuse so adam doesn’t feel more to blame. it’s an entirely gansey thing to do.

“you should probably.”

“probably, but there’s a lot of things i should probably do.”

“i can’t believe you’re being so cryptic at three am.” he wonders if he got the word cryptic from gansey. it seemed like an entirely gansey word to say.

“it seems as good a time as ever. in fact, i would say it’s an ideal time to be cryptic. the atmosphere is quite nice for it.”

adam smiles, his lips curving just slightly. this reminds him of first meeting gansey, the easy conversation. he likes this. he likes when he can ignore everything else and focus on this. they fall into their first easy silence in ages, if not for the steady turning of pages adam almost would have assumed one of them had fallen asleep.

it’s nice. it’s really nice until he does something stupid.

“kiss me.” he isn’t sure why he says it, he isn’t sure what’s telling him he needs to kiss gansey but, for whatever reason, he needs to kiss gansey. maybe it’s just an inherent need to fuck up their relationship, or maybe it’s because for the first time since they got there gansey actually seems like gansey and not richard campbell gansey iii.

“what?” gansey asks, which is fair, adam would be just as confused, adam is confused.

“kiss me.” adam says sitting up a little, he notices gansey’s own posture gets even straighter somehow. “i mean it. i want you to kiss me. please.”

“adam,” gansey starts voice wary, it’s the same voice he uses on ronan when he’s about to do something stupid (he wonders if ronan ever suggested this. he knows this is something stupid). “i don’t think –”

“don’t tell me it’s a bad idea. i know it’s a bad idea. just. just kiss me.” he feels pathetic, all but begging gansey to kiss him. he doesn’t think he’s thought about gansey in that sense before, but he also hadn’t thought about thinking of gansey like that, and yet it feels like he’s been aching to kiss gansey for years.

“what about blue?” gansey asks sounding less sure than he had throughout the entire weekend. there’s a personal stake in this now.

adam shrugs, he feels guilty when he realizes he had hardly considered blue. he’d barely thought about her the whole weekend – and when he did it was always about how she wouldn’t kiss him. trying to figure out why she wouldn’t kiss him. “i have no idea. i don’t think that blue’s my girlfriend anymore though.”

“oh.”

“don’t try to comfort me. look, gansey, either kiss me or i’m going to try and sleep.” the same electricity that crackled through him when the power went out seems to ignite the air now.

just slightly gansey’s brows furrow together, he’s considering it, adam knows that. he also knows it from the way he and gansey have moved subtly closer together. in a moment of boldness not entirely his own adam surges forward. gansey’s lips are chapped against his and not actually moving, in fact the only part of gansey moving is his brows furrowing further. adam’s fully braced for gansey to push him off and to add this to the list of things they absolutely do not speak about.

instead, perhaps instinctually, gansey makes the move to kiss back, his lips shaping with adam’s enough for adam (or maybe cabeswater) to deepen the kiss as much as he can. as far as adam can tell it’s a good kiss – he doesn’t have much (or anything) to compare it to but it’s enjoyable. it’s easier than he expected, it’s not as if he had considered kissing gansey but he assumed, like everything else they did lately, it would be a fight, but this has a shocking naturalness to it that reminds adam of sitting in the back of helen’s car earlier in the weekend (which now feels like ages ago).

he can’t help but wonder why they hadn’t done this before. he knows, of course he knows, there are countless reasons why they shouldn’t be doing it now. but it feels good and adam has so few things in his life that feel good anymore he can’t help but want _more_. adam moves in closer, pushing gansey up against the side of the couch. he’s not sure what he’s doing, he’s not sure if it’s good, and he is sure gansey wouldn’t tell him if it wasn’t, but there’s something just telling him to do more.

for once in his life adam is willing to take whatever gansey will give him.

 

adam wakes up for the second time that morning with a kink in his neck and a feeling of guilt right in the pit of his stomach. when gansey finally stopped kissing, saying for the fifth time it was a bad idea, they went to bed. gansey looked like he was going to say something – apologize maybe, he did a lot of that it seemed like – but decided against it and turned into his room. he didn’t want to be, but adam was grateful not to talk about it.

the next morning they’re on eggshells around each other. gansey isn’t looking at him, which is strange because normally he at least pretends that he’s not weird around adam. there’s a definite tension as the gansey family gets ready to see them off, helen tries to break it, make small talk about things that can’t be controversial – mostly the weather or herself – and mrs. and mr. gansey somehow manage to increase the hospitality.

it’s uncomfortable but they’re good at pretending it’s not.

helen gives him the car which means he doesn’t have to ride back with gansey and he’s simultaneously relieved and disappointed. adam watches gansey watch him, a look of concern on his face – it’s the face he only makes if he doesn’t think adam can see him.

“i don’t think we should do this now,” adam says and it carries a lot of weight. _this_ is any number of things – the kiss isn’t even near the top of the list at this point, just the icing on top of their fucked up cake.

once more gansey looks like he’s about to say something, but instead he just tells adam to flash his lights if something goes wrong and climbs into his car.

 

x.

“you wouldn’t have gone someplace without gansey, though,” blue snaps at him. “you two make a grand couple! kiss him!”

it hits the nail a little too on the head.

 

xi.

the next few days are a blur of ley lines, turning eighteen, literal fire dragons, and not dealing with feelings he wasn’t planning on dealing with anyway.

it’s summer time, which means it’s time for adam to take a lot more shifts, as many shifts as he can really; and, if possible, adam will see as little of his friends (gansey) as he can, and make as much money as he can to pay his ever growing pile of bills.

adam likes work, or, that is to say, he’s good at work. it’s not fun, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s easier to focus on cars than it is to focus on the past couple of days. he only wishes the garage were busier, but it’s henrietta and nothing is busy in henrietta, and so he has more time than he’d like to let his mind wander. and, because of fucking course it does, it wanders to gansey.

adam has always been good at spending too much time thinking about gansey.

 

over the summer he allows _don’t fight with gansey_ to become a mantra. on the rare occasions when he does see gansey, adam is very careful it’s always in a group setting and it is always amiable. so long as he doesn’t bring up money, or the future, or god forbid dc he’ll be fine. or he won’t but he’s good at pretending everything’s okay.

gansey pays him the same courtesy. every so often adam thinks he might say something, pull out ‘we need to talk’ like they’re in the middle of a lover’s spat, but he always manages to bite his tongue, steer the conversation in a different direction, and tack on a smile that forcibly says ‘everything is fine’.

it doesn’t work but they pretend it does.

the others don’t seem to notice, or if they do they’re polite enough to know not to say anything (knowing his friends, adam’s leaning toward the former). and so life goes on as normal as it ever was and adam does not fight with gansey.

 

his mantra is put to the test when they’re finally left alone.

adam tries to avoid monmouth when he can now. he gets ronan to pick him up, drive him wherever the ley line is leading them, and drop him back off at st. agnes. according to carefully drawn up plans he should never have to come near that damn factory. until he does.

it’s supposed to be an hour, maybe two tops, of glendower debriefing. and it’s supposed to be all five of them. but, somehow, gansey managed to forget that sunday is dog walking day for blue, and ronan might listen to gansey the most but that doesn’t mean he always does, so he’s just flat out gone. if noah’s there he’s flickering in and out of existence. so, essentially, it’s adam and gansey. alone.

“we can reschedule,” gansey tells him almost immediately after they realize it’s the two of them.

“no, you’re excited about this, it’s fine,” adam replies, it’s not fine, but part of not fighting is pretending it’s fine. a month ago adam wouldn’t have cared if they were alone together, so it’s fine. “what did you figure out?”

gansey launches into his apparent breakthrough in finding both maura and glendower, apparently the next leg of their adventure involves spelunking. in true gansey fashion, gansey is much too excited to be risking his life in search of a dead welsh king. he gesticulates wildly as he pulls adam over to pour through his journals of research – it’s comfortingly familiar.

adam’s lucky he doesn’t have to work until much later in the evening because he can feel time slipping away from them as they think of more possibilities. it’s the first time in what feels like ages he doesn’t flinch when gansey so much as brushes against him. it’s actually nice, gansey’s warm body flushed against him as they sit on the floor leaned up against his bed and read through old texts looking for a mere mention of caves.

for once, adam almost feels at home.

that doesn’t last long of course, but in his defence this time gansey kisses him.

“what are you doing?” adam asks, pulling away.

“sorry,” gansey answers. adam knows he isn’t when he moves to kiss him again.

adam isn’t sorry when he kisses back.

in the back of his mind he knows this is a bad idea. the first time they did this they only further drove a wedge into their friendship. besides, ronan could come back anytime and noah is probably around somewhere to witness all of it. none of these factors deter him.

he thinks gansey must have also spent a month ignoring a feeling of want, because he’s kissing adam with all he has. dc was hesitant. dc was guilt-ridden and wrong.

this isn’t right but now they don’t care.

adam still isn’t good at kissing, he’s unsure about what to do with his hands and his tongue, but he’s determined to explore every part of gansey he can. running hands through hair and any inch of exposed skin. adam thinks he’s looking for something, but he doesn’t know what.

he isn’t sure if they’ve been kissing for five minutes or five hours but he can’t even bring himself to care. all that matters is gansey’s lips sliding alongside his and the feeling of gansey’s body pressing up against his. adam knows his back should be sore from sitting on the floor for well over an hour, or that he should be stopping this because it’s so obviously not a good idea, but he’s never had good ideas to begin with.

gansey is pressing kisses against his neck and it feels so good he can’t believe they haven’t only been doing this forever.

he feels like he should be doing this forever.

adam catches gansey’s lips with his own. his gut is telling him he wants more than this, he doesn’t know what more than this means but, god, he _wants_. he can’t even bring himself to feel guilty this time.

it’s with great hesitation that adam does finally pull away, he knows as soon as they stop kissing they’re going to go back to what they were, but still he listens to himself ask, “time?”

“what?”

“the time, i have work, and i’m gonna need to shower, and, uh, get ready,” he makes the move to get up and watches gansey’s face fall. he knows that they’re going back to before as well. “let me know about the cave though. it does sound promising.” he doesn’t look back at gansey so he doesn’t have to notice his dishelved clothes or look of disappointment.

at least they weren’t fighting.

 

xii.

the sound of gansey’s voice breaking in genuine fear still rings in his head.

gansey is perfectly put together, everything is deliberate, too big words are carefully chosen and not a hair can be out of place. there’s a reason he seems more god than human some days. people like gansey aren’t supposed to feel panic.

it was people like adam who were made to be cowards, not gansey. 

 

xiii.

adam is genuine when he says he’s glad they aren’t fighting. there’s a lot left unsaid but he’s so fucking glad they aren’t fighting.

gansey drops mallory and the dog off first, which would be strange if adam didn’t know what was about to happen next. gansey makes up a half-hearted excuse of needing adam’s help with homework and drives off before malory can say anything about the fact that school isn’t in session and all of gansey’s books are at monmouth.

the five minute drive to st. agnes drags on as they carefully do not make small talk. there’s no need to upset this.

adam’s relieved to know he isn’t the only one who has to restrain himself from running up the stairs. they think they’ve perfected the art of being inconspicuous. that’s why it’s only once the door is closed and locked does gansey press him up against it and kiss the hell out of him.

they learned quickly that if they just keep kissing there’s no way they’ll be fighting. it’s a terrible, unhealthy, and altogether perfect plan. and it had been happening for nearly a month.

ironically, it was the day gansey tried to tell him that they needed to just forget about dc and the day in monmouth, just ignore it and move on. that was when adam had kissed him and hadn’t stopped kissing him until absolutely necessary. it became regular from there on out, just whenever they could find the time, a moment to themselves.

adam didn’t think he’d ever be trying to be alone with gansey again. now he actively makes excuses to seek it out.

it’s good though, great, kissing gansey. every ounce of pent up resentment and frustration can be forced into a kiss. there’s no need to fight anymore when adam can tell gansey everything he’s been trying not to say by biting down on his lip just a little too hard.

afterwards they don’t talk about it. gansey will run a hand through his hair in an attempt to make it seem purposefully dishelved (when in all actuality it’s a reminder that just a moment adam’s fingers were carding their way through it), and pull on his pastel coloured polo shirt, then he’ll say something about seeing adam after work to make the whole thing seem normal.

at first, every time after they finished, gansey would say something about that being the last time, and adam would always agree.

they had long gave up on that though.

 

xiv.

when gansey comes to visit him under the guise of help with homework they both know he’s already done, it feels like the first actual conversation they’ve had in ages. it puts adam on edge, when he’s kissing gansey he knows they can’t be fighting. when’s he’s talking to gansey there’s nothing to say he won’t snap at him.

he listens to gansey sound equal parts broken and human (which, really, those go hand in hand), and it’s hard to believe this is the same boy that can walk down the halls of aglionby like a king without question. it seems strange that it’s only now he’s realizing gansey is a person – a fate he had wished on him for so long – and he doesn’t like it.

gansey doesn’t deserve the cruel fate of being human.

it’s only after he’s done reading about khruschev’s cold war policies that gansey leans down and kisses him. it’s a relief, it’s an honest to god relief because he’s become so expectant of it that he worries if it didn’t happen things might change.

there’s a tenderness to this kiss that isn’t like before. adam isn’t sure if it’s because of where gansey’s head is at or gansey’s trying to say something. but, either way, adam resists the urge to deepen the kiss, because as easy as it would be to pull that t-shirt off he doesn’t think gansey needs that right now.

adam pushes textbooks out of the way as gansey backs him further into the mattress. he’s careful, all his books are old and on the brink of falling apart, but it doesn’t seem to matter because there’s no urgency in this kiss. instead it’s lips lazily sliding up against each other, adam’s got his back against the wall as gansey half straddles him half sits beside him. it’s comfortable, and even if he wants more, even though he’s always aching for more as far as gansey is concerned, adam, does feel like he could do this forever and almost be content.

when they’re done gansey pulls away and goes right back to talking about glendower and the favour as he pulls on his trench coat. it always feels a little too normal when they’re finished.

 

xv.

adam leaves as soon as blue tells him it’s gansey.

that it’s gansey whose going to die within the year (or maybe sooner he doesn’t know when they made their death list).

he has the fortunate excuse of work – which will hopefully, somehow, manage to serve as a distraction from the image gansey’s convulsing body playing over and over and over in his head. he doubts it will.

he tries to be rational, he tries to remind himself that if they can get to glendower soon enough he can take the favour and save gansey. there’s hope, there’s still a chance that the entire world isn’t going to crumble beneath them all. (adam’s never been the hopeful type).

adam’s hands tense on the steering wheel as he drives out to the factory, he doesn’t think he’s in the state of mind to be driving but he doesn’t intend to let that stop him.  he’s driven under worse conditions. probably.

adam doesn’t know what he wants. he knows he can’t tell gansey – he’d never tell gansey, but he wants his friend to be prepared. he wants to save him before he even has to know something was going to happen. he wants.

the worst part is that it makes sense. that if anyone was going to die it was going to be gansey. only the boy that seems so immortal should be taken away from them.

adam can’t breathe. or maybe he doesn’t want to.

 

xvi.

adam gives up on trying to sleep soon after his father leaves. he gets up, gets in his car, and drives to monmouth.

he knocks, frantic and loud, he knows he’s definitely waking up malory, and perhaps even gansey (the bmw is missing, which isn’t a surprise. he thinks of ronan driving aimlessly after burying his own body and if he wasn’t so preoccupied he’d feel guilty).

“parrish,” gansey says opening the door, he’s not in pyjamas which makes adam think it might not be that late, but he’d lost track of time the same moment robert parrish walked into his apartment. gansey moves to let him inside but adam just shakes his head, there are people there, and while he’s sure noah knows (because there isn’t much noah doesn’t know at this point) he doesn’t want to risk getting caught.

instead adam just jerks his head in the direction of his car and walks away, gansey follows wordlessly, the look on his face tells adam he knows this is important. initially he was planning on driving them somewhere – not st. agnes, but somewhere, somewhere that’s not really anywhere. instead he just pushes gansey up against the cold metal of the pig and kisses him. someone could pull up at any moment but adam can’t be bothered to care, he almost wants to get caught. that way he can add kissing boys to the list of reasons he’s a disappointment to his father.

“this isn’t – we shouldn’t,” gansey says between kisses. adam wonders why he doesn’t want to get caught – gansey could kill a man and still manage to be anyone’s golden boy.

“shut up,” adam only kisses him harder. “i just – i just need you to distract me for a second. _please_.” adam feels everywhere at once, he’s nipping at gansey’s bottom lip and trying to press kisses against his collarbone all at once. he can feel himself fingering the fabric of one of gansey’s ugly polos. he really wishes gansey would start pulling at the frayed hem of his own t-shirt.

adam’s glad gansey kisses back with the same ferocity adam gives, he doesn’t want a tender moment, he wants gansey to feel the same fucked up he does. for once it’s nothing personal.

when they’re done, when adam’s lips are swollen with kisses and gansey’s got an honest to god hickey on his collarbone, that’s when gansey says, “do you need to-”

“no. goodnight, gansey.” (he almost considers saying thank you but that would make a cheap moment too cheap).

xvii.

“that was incredible.”

“what? the kiss, i assumed you were used to those by now.”

“no. today. the courtyard. adam, you’re amazing.”

“don’t wanna talk about it,” adam replies kissing gansey again. the courtyard was an accident, and almost definitely a mistake. the less people know the better, the less attention he has on himself the better. that’s been his outlook on most things in life.

gansey has him pressed up against his desk at monmouth, there were promises of ronan staying at the barns and noah hanging out with blue, and that they would be alone. it feels more planned than other times, it’s not as if they don’t work to find free time anyway, they just pretend that they don’t. keep things casual. at least gansey isn’t trying to cook for him or something too. adam tries very hard not to let the word date flicker into his mind.

if gansey is planning on saying anything else it’s cut off by a whimper and a moan when adam does something with his tongue he didn’t even think would work. adam resists the urge to grin into the kiss, he likes the control that comes with being able to make gansey moan under his touch. it makes him actually feel like he has some sort of leg up. it’s good. it’s great.

adam nips at gansey’s jaw as he starts to pull his shirt off, he’s still in his aglionby uniform so it’s all the more satisfying to take it off. if he didn’t know how much it cost adam would try to tear the damn thing. he can tell gansey still wants to talk about what happened but he can also tell gansey is at a point where he’s prepared to be distracted.

gansey’s shirt is discarded and adam’s is quick to follow. they’ve done this once before, but one of them always backs off before they can go much farther. adam bites and sucks at gansey’s chests, intending to leave a mark only he’ll know is there. as he does so he hops off the desk and backs gansey up onto the bed.

he wonders if it’s him or cabeswater who wants this more, either way he can feel something crackling through him telling him to go further. he kisses gansey with something akin to drowning. he feels like he could be swallowed whole at any moment and for once he doesn’t mind.

 

xviii.

adam doesn’t say anything after the trial is done. he doesn’t watch his father leave, he doesn’t look at gansey and ronan in the stands, he doesn’t move.

he is in awe. watching as everyone in the stands goes to leave, he’s lucky it wasn’t a public case or he’d have to listen to locals cluck about what a bad child he is. it’s henrietta and this is real life judge judy – it’s the trial of the century.

when he does leave gansey and ronan are waiting for him, even though they should probably be going back for school, but adam is grateful. he doesn’t say anything but he hopes they know that anyway.

his mind flicks to the night before with gansey, and he briefly wonders if gansey knows he’s grateful for that as well.

gansey offers to drive him home, keeping his face steady the entire time even though there’s a silent offer attached. and when adam says no he offers to let ronan drive him home, but adam shakes his head again.

he doesn’t need distraction this time.

 

xix.

when maura is back they almost manage to find some semblance of routine. adam goes to school, goes to work, goes home, waits for gansey to come over, pretends to do homework for a few moments before discarding their books to make out.

he never expected kissing gansey and then pointedly not discussing it would become an anchor in his life.

he never expected much about the past six months though.

the thought of gansey dying still looms over him and he still has a lot to spend his days worrying about and every time he thinks of persephone it’s like someone is repeatedly punching him in the stomach. but adam is still happy relative to every other shitty part of his life.

at last he feels awake.

 

xx.

gansey dies and, finally, he has nothing left to give.

**Author's Note:**

> my [tumblr](http://wwwjackszimmerman.tumblr.com/) if you wanna say hi!


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